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(From The Shipwreck)
O’ER the smooth bosom of the faithless tides, | |
| Propelled by flattering gales, the vessel glides: | |
| Rodmond, exulting, felt the auspicious wind, | |
| And by a mystic charm its aim confined. | |
| The thoughts of home that o’er his fancy roll, | 5 |
| With trembling joy dilate Palemon’s soul; | |
| Hope lifts his heart, before whose vivid ray | |
| Distress recedes, and danger melts away. | |
| Tall Ida’s summit now more distant grew, | |
| And Jove’s high hill was rising to the view; | 10 |
| When on the larboard quarter they descry | |
| A liquid column towering shoot on high; | |
| The foaming base the angry whirlwinds sweep, | |
| Where curling billows rouse the fearful deep: | |
| Still round and round the fluid vortex flies, | 15 |
| Diffusing briny vapors o’er the skies. | |
| This vast phenomenon, whose lofty head, | |
| In heaven immersed, embracing clouds o’erspread, | |
| In spiral motion first, as seamen deem, | |
| Swells, when the raging whirlwind sweeps the stream. | 20 |
| The swift volution, and the enormous train, | |
| Let sages versed in nature’s lore explain. | |
| The horrid apparition still draws nigh, | |
| And white with foam the whirling billows fly. | |
| The guns were primed; the vessel northward veers, | 25 |
| Till her black battery on the column bears: | |
| The nitre fired, and, while the dreadful sound | |
| Convulsive shook the slumbering air around, | |
| The watery volume, trembling to the sky, | |
| Burst down, a dreadful deluge, from on high! | 30 |
| The expanding ocean trembled as it fell, | |
| And felt with swift recoil her surges swell; | |
| But soon, this transient undulation o’er, | |
| The sea subsides, the whirlwinds rage no more. | |
| While southward now the increasing breezes veer, | 35 |
| Dark clouds incumbent on their wings appear; | |
| Ahead they see the consecrated grove | |
| Of Cyprus, sacred once to Cretan Jove. | |
| The ship beneath her lofty pressure reels, | |
| And to the freshening gale still deeper heels. | 40 |
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